After the service the only job I could find was as a Baker. I was delivering bread door – two – door in Pennsylvania for about three months. I worked for the Buttercup Bakery.

I had a smart – ass neighbor who lived next door. When I got home from work he would be sitting on his porch and he would yell: “Hey! Buttercup!”

One day I went to work and they had closed the doors. I was out of a job again. I went to the employment office and they told me that united airlines needed people to clean airplanes for the summer.

I went, and I got the job. But I have to tell you cleaning airplanes is the hardest work I have ever done in my life. I spent a summer doing that. That summer there was a water shortage in the northeastern United States. They ran the planes through Pittsburgh, which is where I was working, to get washed every now and then.

I don’t know how many airplanes I washed but my back muscles were like rocks. We had to scrub the upper part of each plane with a big long mop. At the end of three months they were due to lay me off with two weeks’ notice.

At that point a union man came up to me and told me that company had kept me on the payroll for too long and that I was now eligible to work anywhere in the united system. Under union rules they were required to give me a ticket and let me interview for a job.

I looked on the bulletin board and saw that they needed mechanics in San Francisco. I told my manager, but he didn’t want to let me go. They gave me a simple test in mechanics, which I passed, and they gave me two tickets to San Francisco.

I came out to the maintenance base in San Francisco and passed all of the physicals and started working in November of 1965. About two or three weeks later Mary came out with the children.

Sometime around the 25th of January, 1966, workers went on strike. At that time I was not yet a member of the mechanics union, so I didn’t get full benefits. The union member received about $40.00 a week while on strike, but I only got about twenty. I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and breakfast food until I get back to work.

But we had a good time throughout all of this. I would take the kids over to the beach which didn’t cost anything and the kids loved it. We spent a lot of time at the beach until the strike was settled and everyone went back to work. We were living on 7th Avenue in San Bruno, right above the flight path of the airplanes, at this time.

It was noisy; my god it was noisy! It was reading and it often looked like the planes were going to land right on top of the house. But that was the only place we could afford.

After a month or so I went back to work and we started looking for houses. We had trouble qualifying for loan until we met a realtor who did a little magic and got us into a small house. That house is just behind where we live to this day, In Half Moon Bay.

That wasn’t a bad move. The kids grew up here playing in the creeks and trees, or out in the fields playing baseball and football. We never had to worry about our kids.